Re: R: Re: English notation

Luca Mangiat a scritto:

>BP wrote:
>
>> At 20:41 2001-06-29 ?, Raymond Brown wrote:
>>
>> >IMHO the only successful way for a wholesale reform of English (rather
>than
>> >regularizing present spelling) is to adopt a _phonemic_ approach which
>> >accommodates all mainstream varieties of English.
>>
>> And that is what I'm attempting!
>
>From Rosenfelder's site (www.zompist.org/spell.html):
>
><<Ideally you shouldn't have to worry about my dialect at all: you could
>simply take (say) ê to represent whatever you pronounce as the vowel in
met.
>Unfortunately, English dialects are not uniform enough to share a single
>phonology. There are many words that are not only pronounced differently in
>different dialects-- that is, they have a distinct phonetic realization--
>but also have their own phonemic representation.
>
>Some examples:
>
>1. GA is rhotic-- we pronounce the post-vocalic r's-- while other important
>dialects are not, notably the British standard, RP.
>
>2. I distinguish cot and caught, Don and Dawn; these vowels (ô, ò) merge in
>the US West.
>
>3. On the other hand, I merge the vowel sounds in Mary, merry, and marry,
>which are distinguished in Eastern US dialects and in RP.
>
>4. I pronounce w and wh the same.
>>>
>
>So, what to do with these, for intance?

Ha! Well, that exactly what we've been going round and round about.  And
then you get (probably) generational problems-- while I agree with
Rosenfelder's #1,2,3, we part company on #4.

But I certainly subscribe to his main point:  that "English dialects are not
uniform enough to share a single phonology."

I think Tristan mentioned that some Commonwealth countries may adopt US
spellings.  That strikes me as basically unncecessary-- "colour/color",
"tyre/tire" doesn't really bother anyone, does it?  "Gaol" of course is
another matter.......:-)

Out of curiosity, is it possible, Luca, to write your dialect in anything
resembling standard Italian orthography?  I'd think not.

Reply